Saturday, 13 December 2014

I don’t
often write about universities on this blog, because to do so seems too
inward-looking. But current developments underway in UK universities should be
of real public concern. I’m referring in particular to a massive shift towards
requiring academics to generate substantial amounts of grant income to fund
their research. To understand why that matters, it’s necessary to understand a
little bit about how research funding works in the UK (more precisely I should
say England in terms of what follows, although there is considerable similarity
in the rest of the UK). There are two main routes. One is the government
funding distributed by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)
on the basis of the quality of research undertaken (hence it is called QR
funding), with this quality being assessed by the Research Excellence Framework(REF), the latest results of which are due next week. The other route is
research grant income (RGI) which may come from a variety of industrial,
charitable and government sources, with the UK’s research councils (RCUK) being
the most important as regards the latter.

With respect
to QR funding, this is driven mainly by assessments of the quality of
publications (but also by the wider impact of these and some other factors).
Academics undertake QR funded research as part of their contractual duties and
are not tied to any particular projects. RGI funding, by contrast, is based on
bids to support particular projects. QR funding therefore offers considerable freedom
of research focus, but it is not a ‘free for all’ since the REF assessment is
stringent and, indeed, a source of much complaint from academics.

One is just
about the financial rationale of what is happening. Suppose we want to be very ‘hard-headed’
and say something like “well, of course, research must pay its way: it’s high time
these academics learnt to live in the real world”. Apart from any other
problems with such a view, it neglects the fact of QR funding. Academics who
publish work judged to be excellent by the REF generate income for their universities
via HEFCE. Why, then, insist that only RGI money matters?

The other is
even more important. Funding research via RGI requires that the funder be
persuaded in advance of the research that it is worthwhile. That presents
several very important issues, both practical and political. On the former - it’s
very well-known that the value of research is often only apparent many years
after it has been conducted. The computer applications of pure maths are
obvious examples. On the latter – research that seems controversial or
unfashionable will be a poor prospect for deliberative funding decisions. The
two are linked, since it is almost inevitable that grant and project based
funding decisions will be small-c conservative: they are based upon existing knowledge
and understanding.

This has a
particular significance when it comes to the funding of critically-oriented research
about organizations and management. For all that academics may complain about
REF, it has allowed such research to flourish to the extent – and it is a
considerable extent – that it has generated publications deemed to be of high
quality and hence generating QR funding. An approach based on RGI offers a much
less propitious environment for at least two reasons. One is that the very
fractured and fractious state of the field makes it hard to get consensus from
referees on grant applications. Another is that, to the extent that RGI
requires identifiable end users, critical research, whose ‘users’ are typically
civil society at large, is likely to struggle.

Of course we
are not in that situation yet, and that is one of the strangest aspects of this
story. For it is not that QR funding has dried up. True, there have
been for quite some time persistent calls that all government university
research funding should be channelled through RCUK. But that is not yet the case.
It is tempting, then, to read the preoccupation of university managers with
individual RGI records as a matter of managerial control for its own sake,
rather than financial exigency. If so, academics who have for so long
complained about REF may find themselves in the ironic position of defending it
in the face of the emerging landscape RGI targets.

That in turn
should be a real worry beyond academia. I suppose it is just about possible to
imagine at least applied scientific and medical research being funded by
industry and research councils, and some humanities and social science research
being funded by charities and research councils. But even in these cases much
of value will be lost. It’s very difficult, though, to imagine that much in the
way of critical organizational research will get funded, which means that one
of the core areas of human existence will mainly get researched uncritically. If
in doubt, look at the RCUK web page entitled ‘Research and Business: A Productive Partnership’ telling us that “the Research
Councils are a source of ideas, knowledge, expertise, skills and research infrastructure
for your business”. No
mention of the public good there, you may notice, for all that the funds come
from each and every UK taxpayer.

Friday, 5 December 2014

As I noted last year, this blog going live more or less coincides with my birthday, which
is today. I am 50, the blog a more modest 2 years old (but, just as a dog year
equals seven human years, perhaps a blog year is also similarly elongated).
Anyway, last year I posted some blog stats and I thought it might be
interesting to update these. Last year, all time page views were 3,367 with 390
in the month prior to the anniversary. Now, all time views are 7,055 with 364
in the last month. What that means in terms of how many different people read
the blog I don’t know. The most read post is the one entitled The New Barons,
posted in June 2013. I’m pleased about that, as I think it is one of the best
posts I’ve done.

The
breakdown of where people view from is also interesting (or should that be 'reasonably interesting'?). This is the current
top ten list, with last year’s position and views in brackets:

United
Kingdom (1)

2206
(1219)

United
States (2)

1761
(647)

Ukraine
(7)

350
(68)

Norway
(9)

243
(65)

Germany
(3)

216
(148)

France
(6)

209
(73)

Russia
(4)

198
(133)

Ireland
(5)

147
(82)

China
(8)

128
(67)

Netherlands
(-)

98
(-)

So Ukraine
and Norway storm up the charts, whilst the US records an impressive percentage increase without changing its position. Netherlands makes a first appearance,
but Australia, 10th in last year’s list, drops out. What it all
means, goodness knows. But it is in some indefinable way fascinating (to me).

Meanwhile, I
am also fascinated by the online reviews of the book (indulge me, it’s my birthday)
on Amazon, GoodReads and Google Books. They are scattered around and split
between different editions and, as one might expect, vary wildly in their
judgements. Thus, on one Google Books page:

“This is the least interesting book I have ever read, and
I wouldn't be upset about it if Chris Grey did not try to pass it off as
interesting. I do not recommend Chris Grey.”

And:

“bleeeech! Way to preach about how you hate boring
management books and then turn out to be one.”

I love both
these reviews for their conflation of book and person, and the first in
particular for giving me what is at least an accolade: it’s quite an
achievement to be the least interesting book ever (and we can surely assume that the
reviewer is widely read).

The reviews on GoodReads are mainly much kinder (four reviews, two 5*, one 4* and one 1*)
including this gem from ‘Eryc’:

“This book blew my little mind. In the way that going to grad
school for education caused me to see the deep and complex inadequacies of the
public school system, this book has caused me to question much of my received
knowledge and beliefs about organizations and, more to the point, corporations.
Chris Grey's insightful analysis has unmoored me a bit and made me deeply
worried about things that previously ‘seemed to me to be true’.”

Still, we
also hear again from ‘Audrey’, yes:

“bleeeech! Way to preach about how you hate boring
management books and then turn out to be one.”

“Fantastic
read. It has certainly cast a new perspective on how I view Organisations and
Organisational theory.”

‘Gavin
Stokes’ “found this a very enjoyable read, not from the viewpoint of a course
book, but simply as a well written book”, whilst for ‘Ronald G. Young’ it’s “the
best critique of modern society I’ve read”. But, alas, ‘diel3n4’ pronounced it “boring”
and ‘JAdams’ thought it was a difficult read and a waste of money.

It would be
silly to pretend that I don’t prefer the positive reviews to the negative ones
but ultimately I think that any reaction is better than none, and it’s just an
unavoidable fact of the internet age that there are going to be a whole range
of reactions. I do actually quite appreciate the way that the reviews on all
the forums seem to suggest quite extreme reactions – people either love it or
hate it (and, so far, there’s more love than hate). For a book that was, after
all, written to be provocative perhaps the worst reaction would be the 3-star ‘it’s
ok’ review which seems to be the one reaction I haven’t had so far.

Apart from
these site reviews, I also continue to receive feedback in other forms, such as
direct emails and many other ways. Two I have recently come across particularly
pleased me. One was a long, thoughtful review by Martin Vogel on the blog of ‘counter-consultancy’
VogelWakefield, from which I will just quote the final sentence:

What to make
of these various reactions I don’t know, except that they confirm my view that
this subject, organization studies, of which few have heard and fewer,
probably, think of great interest is, indeed, capable of being both interesting
and provocative (in good and bad ways) to many audiences. The book, and maybe
this blog, taps into some of that but there is still a huge space available for
accessible discussions and applications of organization studies if it could
escape the horrible straitjacket of the ‘top journals’ it mainly inhabits.

Which brings
me back to the blog and reflections on its anniversary. When I started it, I
really had no idea what shape it would take but looking back on the posts I’m
struck by the fact that they are in some respects far more varied than I would
have expected. I thought that I’d probably spend a lot of time pointing out the
latest case of unintended consequences of business decisions, or the inanities
of organizational culture management. In fact, I mostly seem to post about
politics, economics and history. Perhaps that isn’t so surprising. If the book
has a message at all, it is that to study organizations is to study everything.

About Me

I am Professor of Organization Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London, and was previously a professor at Cambridge University and Warwick University. I am a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS). I write two blogs in a personal capacity. One is based on my book A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Studying Organizations, and discusses news stories or other events that relate to its themes. The other is about the consequences of 'Brexit' - Britain's decision to leave the European Union, and is accompanied by a twitter feed @chrisgreybrexit.
Whichever one you are looking at now, click on my profile link if you want to view the other.